aid "G. N." to Galveston, cut out
the instruments, put out the lights in the operating room, and started
to go home through the receiving room and I was about to put out the
last light there, when the outer door opened and in staggered a half
drunken ranchman who said,

"Hold on there, young fellow, I want to send a message to St. Louis."

"I'm sorry, but it's too late to send it now. All the instruments are
cut out and we wont have St. Louis until eight o'clock in the morning.
Come around then and some of the day force will send it for you."

"But," he said in a maudlin voice, "I've got nineteen cars of cattle out
here that are going up there to-morrow and I want to notify my agents."

I persisted in my refusal and was beginning to get hot under the collar,
but my bucolic friend also had a temper and showed it.

"D--n it," he said, "you send this message or there is going to be
trouble."

"Not much, I won't send your confounded old message. Get out of this
office: I'm going home."

Just then I heard an ominous click and in a second I was gazing down the
barrel of a .45, and he said,

"Now will you send it? You'd better or I'll send you to a home that will
be a permanent one."

A .45, especially when it is loaded, cocked and pointed at your head,
with a half drunken galoot's finger on the trigger, is a powerful
incentive to quick action.

"Give me your blamed old message, and I'll send it for you."

Now there wasn't a through wire to any place at the time, but I had
thought of a scheme to stave him off. I took his telegram, went over and
monkeyed around the switch board for a while, and then sat down to a
local instrument and went through the form of sending a message. My
whole salvation lay in the hope that he was not an operator and would
fail to discover my ruse. I glanced at him furtively out of the corner
of my eye, and there he stood, pistol in hand, grinning like a monkey
and swaying to and fro like a reed in the wind. I didn't know what that
grin portended for me, but after I had gone through the form of sending
the telegram, I hung it up on the hook, and turned around with,

"There, I hope you are satisfied now. Your blamed old message has been
sent."

"Satisfied! Why certainly I'm satisfied. I just wanted to show you that
the Western Union Company wasn't the whole push. Come on over to the
White Elephant with me and we'll have a drink together, just to show
there's no hard feelings between us,"